"Austerity" is the most looked-up word of 2010, but "App" is the American Dialect Society's pick for the top term of the year, notes KFI. The tech-y abbreeve for a cell phone or computer software program won extra exposure with the slogan "There's an app for that," app stores, and according to the official press release, “One of the most convincing arguments from the voting floor was from a woman who said that even her grandmother had heard of it.” more ›

Are the words we use a reflection of the world we live in? That could be the case for 2010, when the most-oft looked up word, according to word experts Merriam-Webster, was austerity. A bit bleak? Perhaps. Blame the economy. "Searches for the word began to spike in May, around the time when Greece began battling its debt crisis with harsh austerity measures," explains Slate. Work "austerity" into a few sentences from here on out, and it'll be part of your vocab in no time. more ›

So Merriam-Webster's word of the year is w00t. Sort of uninspiring, right? As in, aren't there thousands of other words that communicate so much more, mean so much more than the gamer battle-cry for "yes! i just killed your guy and i still have seven lives left!"?!?!? Surely there are more important things that happened in the word world than this, we kept thinking. Surely there were actual words that should have won. "Facebook" was... more ›